


Aurelian

by JeckParadox



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Gen, Immortality, Multiple Personalities, Origins, Villains, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 16:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1354531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeckParadox/pseuds/JeckParadox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of two brothers who committed a sin of alchemy that would change the world. One of them was once a slave, the other was once a dwarf in a flask. The story of their lives, their children, their ambitions, and the lives inside their heads and outside that one chooses to save and the other chooses to consume.<br/>A Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood/Manga fanfic on the original relationship between Hohenheim and the Dwarf in the Flask, and their experiences with immortality, and how their paths diverged.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He writhed, the screaming wouldn't stop, the voices wouldn't stop. There were so many. There were just. So. Many. He couldn't handle it. No human _should have_ to handle it. There were just too many souls in his body. 

And he recognized far too many of them. 

"Van Hohenheim." It was one voice among thousands. It didn't matter. There were thousands screaming at him. "Van Hohenheim!" Tears began falling to the sand, hands covering his ears and only blocking out a single one of the voices. "Van Hohenheim, ignore them, quiet them. It's your body! They're nothing but energy now, just shut them up!" He pushed his hands harder and harder to his ears as his doppelganger walked a circle around him. "Van Hohenheim, listen to my voice, it's the only one that matters, it's the only one that's still alive-" Hohenheim's hands shot out from his ears, reaching forward with thousands of wills, including his own, as he wrapped his hands around his Doppelganger's throat and shoved him into the sand. "-HOHENHEIM! It's me, get a hold of yourself! Hohenheim!" The doppelganger slammed his hand on the ground and many small stone pillars shot from the ground with the crackle of red energy. Hohenheim was lifted into the air, his body losing the direction it had while it was attempting to kill Dwarf out of the Flask. The Doppelganger watched as Hohenheim's eyes rolled in his head, his body jerking with thousands of tiny movements. His brain had far too many minds trying to claw for control, his body had too many signals to mean anything. Five hundred thirty-six thousand three hundred twenty-nine souls. 

Dwarf frowned in concern. "Hohenheim?" He asked again, slowly lowering the stone pillars. "Hohenheim, you are stronger than this, it is your body." He walked up to Hohenheim and placed both of his brand-new hands on the sides of his face, looking into his shifting eyes. "I merely told you to look inside of yourself, you didn't fall in!" He growled, shaking the identical man. "Listen to me, Hohenheim, don't give into the madness! You're stronger than this." He waited until tears began flowing as Hohenheim stilled. "Have you finished?"

"You... monster..."

His doppelganger frowned slightly. "Don't resort to such a vague term, Van Hohenheim. I am a homunculus, a new breed. Fueled by a philosopher stone with 500,000 souls!" He pressed a finger into Hohenheim's chest. "Just like you."

Hohenheim slowly turned, getting up methodically, shaking and woosy. "Then I'm a monster too... I didn't ask for this you... you..."

"Traitor? Liar?" The Homunculus asked. "I never served Xerxes, and I was always capable of lying to get what I want. It was their fault for trusting such a malevolent creature so easily." His grin widened impossibly, stretching the copy of Hohenheim's face. "I mean, honestly!" He threw his arms open. "A creature you are incapable of understanding commands you to destroy your entire nation, and you only nod along and go with it?! Such fools deserved their fate!"

Hohenheim's hands were once again around the throat of the monster, souls inside his head screaming vengeance. "What about everyone else?! What about every other man, woman, and child you subjected to... to..." his hands let go and gesticulated wildly as his panicked mind tried to describe the emotions flooding him, " _this_?!" He finally shouted, gesturing to himself and the Homunculus he just released. 

The Homunculus shrugged. "It's the way of nature, I consumed them, and shared my kill with my only relative, my only friend. Wasn't that kind of me?" He rested a hand on Hohenheim's shoulder. "I didn't have to save you, you know. I could have told you to set me down, to stand with the King and receive immortality, as a 'last gift' to you. And you too, Hohenheim, would have believed that lie and allowed yourself to be absorbed. You still exist because of my kindness."

"I wouldn't have set you down." Hohenheim said quickly. "I never would have asked for this! I didn't want to be immortal! I just wanted to be free! I just wanted to study, to live in the city, marry, have children! I just wanted to live like any other man of Xerxes!"

"Hohenheim, you are more free now than ever before! How you live, no matter what you do or where you go, will _be_ how the men of Xerxes live."

Hohenheim reached out to strangle him again, but the Homunculus was too quick, lifting himself onto another platform. "You can joke at a time like this?!" Hohenheim shouted upwards.

"I don't see why not!" Homunculus shouted down in reply, still smiling. He shook his head. "Hohenheim... you are confused, you haven't grasped the absolute wonder of what has just happened! We're free! Free! I have legs, I have arms, I have skin, Van Hohenheim, skin!" He just kept on grinning, tears beginning to flow from his eyes as they began turning red. "I'm free from the flask! I don't have to be carried, at the mercy of lowly human alchemists who don't appreciate or understand their miraculous creation!" He took in a deep breath, and then let it out. "I have the powers they dreamed of, I can transmute on a grander scale without having to even motion a circle! And you, you Hohenheim, when you consider the possibilities... you could have your human community, Hohenheim, you could father a thousand children over the years, you could found your own dynasty and be worshipped for generations in a society of your own design! You have a body that will not, can not, should not die! You can study all the subjects of the world, all over the world, and you have the time and strength to do it while simply walking with your own two feet!" 

He jumped down, grabbing Hohenheim's shoulders and spinning him around. "Let go of me!" He shouted. 

"Think about it Hohenheim, think about what I've given you. Think about what you now possess! Think about what you could make! Us two, you, my blood brother, and I... we are the closest thing to Gods upon this world! Everything you've ever dreamed of Hohenheim, it's now yours to make, if you so wish it!"

Hohenheim stared at him for a few more moments. Looking down at his hands. "Dwarf... you made me into a monster! You... you killed _everyone_! I never wanted any of that!"

Homunculus frowned, shaking his head slightly. "Van Hohenheim, I did you a favor, you _will_ see that. Any other human in the world would kill, in fact, I've proven it, their entire nation for a chance to be what you are now. But... you are confused, tired, your mind is obviously weaker than I was led to believe... Stay here, in the castle, I'm going to go... stretch my legs for a few days... when I come back, we can talk more about this. When your mind is more open, when you can see farther ahead. And we'll decide where to go from there. Is that fine with you, Van Hohenheim?"

"I... I..." He glanced at the slowly setting sun and ran his hands through his hair. "I don't care. Go. I don't want to look at you right now..."

"Very well. I hope your soul-searching goes well." And the doppelganger, wearing a dead King's clothes, joyfully began running down the streets on his new legs. 

Van Hohenheim stared after him for a few seconds, before slowly walking back into the palace, back through the halls littered with fresh corpses, to his room. He didn't dare try 'soul-searching' knowing that if he looked inside himself he would find more souls than he would ever want to find. He slowly drifted off to sleep.

If he had nightmares he couldn't remember them.


	2. Chapter 2

"Van Hohenheim, are you still here?" The homunculus asked, standing outside the castle doors. He waited a few seconds before sighing and tapping his fingers together, the tips quickly blackening and sharpening. He jabbed the wall and with a joyful burst of motion, began climbing the walls of the Xerxes palace. He flung himself over the side, the grin beginning to disappear as he saw the trails along the ground. "Really, Hohenheim?"

He followed one trail to its end, a deep well, decorated on all sides with the Gods of Xerxes. "So, this is what you plan on spending your eternity doing? Burying the dead?"

"I don't see why you should have a problem with it Dwarf." Hohenheim grunted, pulling another wagon filled with corpses. 

"I don't, not really, it's not my business after all." He bent down, sniffing at the wagon and putting on an exaggerated face of disgust. "But it's such a waste!"

"What, of meat?" Hohenheim asked sarcastically. "There aren't enough vultures in the world."

"No, of your time." the homunculus replied, before another grin formed. "Besides, every vulture that soared over Xerxes is currently trapped in your veins. Well, our veins."

Hohenheim raised an eyebrow. "You took the animals too?"

"I don't see why I wouldn't. Most animals don't have the life force to compare with a human's, but it's still soul power I don't want to waste."

Hohenheim grunted, avoiding looking at the homunculus and dumping the barrel over into the well.

"How unceremonious." He said with a look of amusement. "Hohenheim, if you're wasting your time doing your honors to them at all, shouldn't you at least be praying or saying a few comments for those who've passed?"

"What do you care? You never believed in the Gods of Xerxes."

"Have you?"

Hohenheim frowned, before sighing and glaring at the homunculus. "I was just a slave, they never bothered with the stories, and after that, I was chiefly involved with the mysteries of the physical world."

"I suppose so. Would you care to learn about them? They were, after all, part of your precious culture."

"I will. On my own time." Hohenheim growled, turning the wagon back around to continue picking up bodies. 

The homunculus followed, the same mildly amused expression on his face. "This _is_ your own time. Why not head up to the libraries? Even as you rose to power, acting as my official caretaker, the High Alchemists still refused to allow you into their ranks. There's still much you could learn about alchemy, your culture, the world at large."

"..."

"Speaking of the world at large, Hohenheim-"

"Stop talking, Dwarf."

The homunculus raised an eyebrow. "Are you still refusing to speak to me?"

"When I'm near you the voices get angry. They know you're the one who did this to them. To me." He gritted his teeth. "I can barely hear my own thoughts among their screams at you. And it gets even worse when you speak."

The homunculus shook his head. "Hohenheim, the voices will disappear if you make them. They're just energy. They don't think any more. Just... pain. Confusion. You have a stronger will than theirs, ignore it, and it'll go away. Like the sound of the sea."

"...The sea? What do you know about the sea?"

"I've read much about the sea, not to mention all I know already! Information is key, Hohenheim, I never forget any of it, no matter how trivial." 

"How is the constant wailing inside my soul like the sea?"

"Those who visit the ocean can barely hear themselves over the sounds of the waves, but the longer they're there, the more accustomed they become to the sound, until they literally cannot hear it at all. Don't pay any attention to the other souls in you. Ignore them, and they'll fade into one, easily ignorable, constant noise. Their quote unquote identities will disappear utterly, and the screaming will never go away, but it won't mean anything, like the sound of the ocean, and you'll be able to tune it out the same."

"...I don't want to ignore it."

"Why wouldn't you? They're painful, aren't they?"

"Yes, yes, and every second I acknowledge your existence it gets worse, but they're people! My people! I can't just wait for them to... disappear, for their minds to be gone."

"They're already gone."

Hohenheim stared at him. "No they're not, I can hear them, they're crying for help, they're addressing me, they're cursing you."

"Just echoes of sentience. Stop prodding at them, and they'll disappear. Mine already have."

Hohenheim was silent for a time as they made their way through the castle grounds, stopping every so often to pick up a body and put it in the wagon. After the third body, the homunculus began helping as well. 

"So Hohenheim." The homunculus began once again. "Did you think about my offer?"

"What offer?"

"Travel the world, in search of knowledge. Seeing everything that exists in the world. And, just for you, my friend, the creation of our own society?"

"Oh, is that what you were offering?" Hohenheim asked sarcastically. "Our own society, where we would be worshipped as gods?"

"Why not? We would be wiser and more powerful than any of them, would it not be right to worship us, as you worshipped your master and he worshipped the King?"

"Whu- I did not worship my master!"

"Of course you did, even as you jumped ahead of his knowledge by leaps and bounds, you would always insist that you were his mere assistant, that he was great, and merciful, and understanding of you. He kept you chained, kept you in the lowest caste of your society, out of arrogance and fear. He was born into his position, and learned from rotting tomes. I was born from your blood, born with a knowledge beyond any living human. I gave you your name, gave you the information that would form the basis for the rest of your life's work, and I told you even more every day. I brought you out of slavery, Hohenheim, my only friend, and yet, when I, a superior being in every way but physical strength to him, told you the secrets of the universe in plain terms, you accepted them with perhaps a 'thank you'. When he thought to tell you something, you would go over his words again and again, thinking there is some deeper meaning to them."

Hohenheim stopped pushing the wagon and glared at him. "I did not worship him! I was learning from him! ...were you jealous? Dwarf?"

"I am capable of jealousy." The homunculus said sagely. "But I did not envy your master. He was a fool. Simple as that."

"He created you!"

"Hohenheim, _you_ created me, as a father, as a blood relation, as a purpose to my lonely life in a bottle. He had a lucky accident whilst doing an illegal human transmutation experiment. He mistakenly mixed up a chemical formula on the blood of a slave he thought was of no use to him, twisting the energies the wrong way in a transmutation circle." His eyes were red once again, as he spoke. Hohenheim stared at him in wonder, as the shadows of the halls seemed drawn to the homunculus. "Opening a door that should not be opened upon punishment by God. And receive that punishment he did, along with every one of his kin." the homunculus turned back toward Hohenheim. "You worshipped a fool who only ever hurt you. When you should have been worshipping me. That made me mad, that made me... yes, I suppose I was jealous of that misdirected admiration, but I don't think I would have enjoyed it if you worshipped me. I much preferred our hilarious arguments."

Hohenheim shook his head in disgust, pushing the wagon up to the next body. 

They continued on in silence for another few minutes. "You still haven't answered my offer."

"I don't want to be worshipped. I'm either a human, like anyone else. Or a monster, who they should be disgusted with."

The homunculus nodded. "A monster in human form, speaking words of wisdom, with powers that defy the rules of alchemy, appearing miraculous." He grew that mischievous, impossibly wide grin, "Why would they possibly worship you?"

"Be quiet."

"Fine then, we don't set ourselves up as gods." The homunculus continued, watching as Hohenheim stopped to pick up another corpse, a woman, a slave, probably one of the castle staff. From the sudden wince the man had, he wondered if she was one of the voices in his head he had not yet quieted. "Still, what will you spend this eternity on, if not gathering knowledge or experiencing the world?"

Hohenheim placed her in the wagon and stood there, facing her for a few seconds. 

He turned around, his face more sad than angry now. "That sound nice... and... honestly, I don't know what else there is for me. I don't want to haunt Xerxes until it falls to ruins. I just don't know if I want to travel alongside you."

The homunculus frowned, giving a genuine sigh, "I see. I think I understand your sympathy with the humans we consumed, but I still hope you can realize that I am not a human."

"I know you're not a human. You're a monster. A virus or a fungus... or.. or something, that should have stayed in it's flask like it belonged."

"I am not a human. I am an intelligent animal, just like a human is an intelligent animal. I am simply the superior of the two. It is my nature to try to improve myself. I am not a human, and I am willing to consume them, just as you would consume a sheep. But it is my nature. Not because I am a rogue human, a sociopath who is dangerous to the community. I am a superior animal. It is not something you have to forgive, it is something you must simply accept."

Hohenheim grunted. "I think I always understood that... but you can speak! You could sympathize with us! How could you lie and kill all of them?!"

"I did not sympathize. I understood them, I was even occasionally fond of them. However, no human life is worth my own, and sacrificing a few hundred thousand in order to live? Wouldn't you do the same if they were dogs, and you were trapped as I was?"

"...I don't know... I understand... I really do... but you're still a monster, under any sense of the word. And there is no way in hell I am ever going to be able to forgive you." Hohenheim sighed. "I'm sorry. But I don't... I don't ever want to see your face again. You betrayed me, betrayed the King, betrayed Master-"

"I didn't betray you. I saved you."

"You betrayed me when you forsook humanity!"

"I never respected humanity in the first place! But you are not just a 'human' you're my friend! My family! One of my own!" The homunculus roared, Hohenheim backing up against the wall, breathing heavily. "...mine."

"...Just go, Dwarf."

The homunculus looked at him pleadingly. "...What will you do with yourself Hohenheim? What will you do with my gift?"

"Go away Dwarf. I hope you'll find your freedom worth it. Don't kill anyone else."

The homunculus stared at him for a few more seconds, unmoving as Hohenheim picked up another body and put it in the wagon. 

"It was worth it, Hohenheim. I wish you a good life, my brother."

Hohenheim didn't turn around, didn't watch him leave, and the homunculus did not look back. 

 

 

Days later, when every corpse in the palace had been set into the well, Hohenheim sealed it with his alchemy, marking down the words HERE LIE THE VICTIMS OF THE TRAGEDY OF XERXES, MAY THEIR SOULS FIND REST. It was only a small percentage of those who died in the entire nation, but already he felt he had buried far too many people than he should have. 

As he left the palace gates, he wrapped a cloth around his face to try and block out the smell of rotting flesh. The only fresh footsteps were heading straight West. Toward the nations of Aerugo, Creta, Drachma, and Ishval and a small, out of the way, insignificant nation between them, named Amestris.

So he turned East. Toward the desert and whatever land was on the other side.


	3. Chapter 3

"Wilfred, please, please quiet down, I'm not going to do that. There are children here, for God's sake!"

"No, no, I'm sorry, just... ugh... There wouldn't be much to it, after all, would there? Even if I would do that, I'm... well... here. Heh."

He coughed, his voice cracking, almost a whisper by now, the sand all around him. 

"No, Ama, we can't turn back. We can't. I'm sorry, but we have to be closer to the East side of the desert than the West by now."

"I know its been a year. But we can't turn back."

"Yes. We should have brought a camel."

"Yes. We should not have brought this much weight in supplies."

"Would you rather we didn't bring food along?!" The outburst brought on another fit of coughing, and then dry heaving. He wouldn't die, not from something as simple as starvation and dehydration and exhaustion at once.

He was immortal. He could walk the world without stopping, without resting, without drinking, hell, he could probably make due without air, if he had to, at least for a few months before his stone burned out creating molecules to feed his body from nothing. 

But God Damn did it hurt.

And the company didn't exactly help on the voyage. Sure, the conversation was entertaining, it drove him on, gave him purpose, and them too. 

But it was distracting, trying to keep walking in a straight line when you could barely see and barely stand, and especially with more than five hundred thousand people shouting at him. 

He could have transmuted water, or bread, or something, from the sand, with the help of his stone. But that would mean killing them permanently. Burning the energy that made up what the people of Xerxes were. 

* * *

He didn't last long after that, but he never stopped talking to them, speaking with them, comforting them, promising them things he didn't know if he could deliver. 

It had been a year and a few weeks since he had become a monster. 

In that time, he had accidently erased two people from his mind through a transmutation. When he finally had enough, a break in judgement, gone mad from hunger or thirst or any of the other things he was suffering, and built an oasis for himself in a flash of red lightning, a cool shelter, a pool of freshwater, a large mass of edible molecules that almost tasted like bread dough. 

The most relaxing, fulfilling, satisfying moment of his life, he was sure, after all that time in the desert. 

Two people.

Gone. 

Forever.

Their names were Slave 57 and Maia.

He was a slave, working for a horse keeper a few miles out of the capitol. His master was in the homunculus. Most of the horses he took care of, their weaker souls were here inside him too. They mourned when he was used up almost as much as Hohenheim did. 

Maia was an heiress to a minor noble family. She had been distantly related to the King by her mother's side, but she had never cared much about that. She enjoyed reading, and considered taking up alchemy, before deciding she wasn't cut out for studying chemistry. She turned to writing instead, and had only written one chapter of a story, before she was absorbed with everything else. Her parents, and her suitor, were in Hohenheim as well. Her little brother in the homunculus. They mourned for the two of them almost as much as Hohenheim did. 

He had a bath, a drink of clean water, a bit of shade, and a bit of food.

That wasn't worth their lives, he thought.

But that was what he got for them.

That was his equivalent exchange.

He kept marching forward, at a quicker pace, resolved to never do alchemy again, across the desert, barely leeching off of some animal souls. He got weaker and weaker, and stopped paying attention to the outside world. It would only be more sand. He had wanted to see the world, and the world was made of sand. So he delved inward, speaking in depth with every soul he hadn't already spoken to. 

He didn't stop talking, but he couldn't keep on going forward, he didn't have the energy. So he collapsed, and laid there for days in the sand, so engrossed in conversation it wasn't until the merchants had put a canteen to his lips that he realized someone had come to save him. 

* * *

 

"I'm sorry, I don't understand you." He said for what might have been the hundredth time, in between the expressions of gratitude that he hoped translated with face and tone alone, to his apologies as they lifted him from one camel to the next. 

They were kind people, a small group, that had been heading West, across the desert, hoping to reach Xerxes. Merchants that were searching for new customers. They were still going West, no matter how much he tried to explain to them that there was nothing there, that they should simply return back home. They didn't speak the language of Xerxes, and so his year of travelling by foot across the desert was slowly undone. At least it wasn't as far as he thought. With the camel's pace, their well-stocked supplies, their experience at traveling, and most importantly, their compass, they were making great progress in comparison to his half-dead shambling. 

* * *

 

A young man, the leader of the group, as far as Hohenheim could tell, spoke to him often and excitedly, pointing ever forward toward the West. The leader of the Merchants seemed encouraged by Hohenheim's presence, probably taking the man as proof they were almost across the desert. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, and the group spent another three months going West before reaching the edges of the arid prairies of Xerxes. 

In that time Hohenheim was beginning to understand the language, Xingese, to the point where he could at the very least request water, food, rest, and give basic directions. His shamble through the desert had been mostly aimless, following the rising sun as a general focus point. But the closer they got to Xerxes, the more he could recognize of the desert. He consciously steered them toward his small soul-made oasis, though in the time that had passed, it had long-since dried. 

When he saw the hills of Xerxes again, he felt a burst of emotions that stirred him on, and taking inspiration from him, the Xingese leader followed his lead toward one forward to one of the edge towns of Xerxes. The group was in good spirits after that, Hohenheim had gotten his strength back from the food and rest the merchants provided him, and guided them with an obvious familiarity that they knew they had brought their guest back home. It wasn't until they reached the first town that the merchants began feeling the sense of dread that permeated the dead country. 

There were decayed corpses in every house of the small town. The leader of the Xingese said something that later Hohenheim had found out meant "bandits" at the first home, but by the fourth, and finding the skeletons of chickens, horses, and birds, the merchants began muttering what Hohenheim would later find out meant "poison". By the third town they passed through, with dying and weed-filled crops, littered with corpses untouched by any kind of scavenger larger than a  dust mite, without birdsong, without a single rabbit poking its head out the ground, the Xingese had concluded that Xerxes was cursed land, and turned back toward the East. 

* * *

 

"Tai, tell me again, where you're from."

"The Chang province." The leader of the group said, smiling. 

"That's... the 32nd family, correct?"

"Yes. The previous Emperor was a Chang. And the Emperor four generations before was as well. This has been a good century for us Changs."

"And the current Emperor?"

"Long Han." Tai said, saying the name with a sense of respect. "He was the twentieth son of San Chang."

Hohenheim sweatdropped slightly, he had discussions with the Xing Merchants many times about their home country, but the cycle of inheritance had always stretched his sense of disbelief slightly.  He couldn't imagine a household with thirty kids, let alone fifty... and all of them trying to murder each other. 

"What is Chang province like?"

Tai smiled slightly, "it's beautiful, if small. We're along the border of the nation, so it's fairly flat, endless prairies and marshes, green forests, and temples thousands of years old." The two fell into a comfortable silence, one remembering, the other imagining, based on the vague description. 

"...you're very relaxed about this." Hohenheim eventually said.

"I'm returning home, I can't help but feel happy."

"But you haven't brought anything back. Won't your Lord-"

"Listen Van."

"I told you that's-"

"Van." Tai said, harsher this time. "It was a suicide mission. The Chang family have fallen out of favor with the current Emperor, our Heir didn't have a chance at the crown this generation to begin with, no matter what we managed to find across the desert. They'll be grateful we came back at all. Who knows? Maybe the information that the land beyond the desert is cursed and barren will be enough to get a reward, after all, by coming back alive and reporting that, we won't waste time and money sending any more travelers to the West. The entire country is useless. We're bringing back the one survivor, of a plague that wiped out all life in the cursed West."

Hohenheim quieted. 

Tai narrowed his eyes, a sly smile breaking out across his face. "Unless there's something more you know about it, Van Hohenheim?"

"...It was a curse. And a plague. Like you said." Hohenheim's face looked wistfully behind him, to the West. "A plague caused by a malicious spirit, that robbed every living thing in Xerxes of its soul."

"And yet you survived." Tai said.

"Well, isn't it obvious?" Hohenheim widened his eyes as much as possible, bearing his teeth in an attempt to look comically demonic. " ** _I_** am the malicious spirit!"

"Of course." Tai said, with a small laugh. "Any of us could have told you that, freeloader."

"Ow, that's harsh. Who was the one who navigated you idiots halfway across the desert?"

"Who were the ones who navigated the other half, and fed you the whole time?"

Hohenheim shrugged in defeat, his eyes turning back toward the East, toward his new home. "...How will I ever repay you, Tai?"

"Don't worry, its all settled. Your guidance was a great help to us." Tai sighed slightly. "And we may not have found any gold you can wear, but the closest thing would be you, wouldn't it?"

Hohenheim chuckled. The Xingese merchants had always admired the golden color of his hair and his eyes, and had originally thought it was a good omen, that they would find a land full of treasure. 

"I suppose so."

"There it is!" Cried one of the men riding in the front, gesturing wildly in the distance. "I recognize that rock! We'll be in Xing by tomorrow!"

Hohenheim let out a sigh of relief he didn't know he was holding. 

Tomorrow would be the start of his new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alchemy, how does it work even?  
> I mean, I get the gist of the deconstruction/reconstruction, I can see how someone can turn a stone street into a stone spike.  
> But how did Ed make gold out of coal? Gold is a pure metal, and coal is mostly carbon. Does alchemy go beyond to mixing and matching the placement of molecules, to actual breaking protons apart? How do they deal with radiation? Father made a tiny Sun, and it was all shocking that he could be making little nuclear reactions.  
> But wouldn't you have to do that to make one element into another? And if that's the case, why don't the Amestrians have nukes yet?  
> Alchemy, how does it even work?


End file.
